Softimage Picker

[David Gallagher]

Hello! We recently announced we are releasing this great Maya Picker GUI
plug-in to the community as a promotion.
http://www.animschool.com/Uploads/homepagemedia/AnimSchoolPickerBanner5RGBWeb.jpg

It's done using Qt. We have a wonderful programmer involved, but he's
not familiar with Softimage.

Would anyone care to guess if any/some parts would be portable to
Softimage? Or care to throw their hat in the ring for a potential
conversion to Softimage?

This is somewhat similar to the synoptic, but much more dynamic and easy
to author.

Thanks,
Dave G
AnimSchool

[Simon Anderson]

Hi David,

Im very happy to help and lend a hand, have done lots of pyQt for softimage pipeline programs over the years.
For Qt to work in Softimage you have to have Jo's + Steves Qt plugin, if your cool with that Ill gladly help script/port it.

Cheers
Si

--
-------------------
Simon Ben Anderson
blog: http://vinyldevelopment.wordpress.com/

[Steven Caron]

i think its great to port this using the pyqt plugin jo and i made... but this is what i have always wanted now that pyqt and cross platform development is more easy.

http://www.paolodominici.com/products/zvgui/

no more porting of a character specific gui

s

[Eric Thivierge]

I believe Paolo did some custom work with that gui as well. At least that's what I remember he told me so that isn't just straight vanilla PyQt. FYI.

--------------------------------------------
Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

[Steven Caron]

its not pyqt at all.. he said its XNA.

regardless the same concept should be done with pure pyqt, ie. an editor, custom buttons, and the ability to execute any code on those buttons, some sort of external format for saving a gui out, the ability to know its environment and execute maya code or softimage code, etc

s

[Jeremie Passerin]

The bi-directional is the only one I always find tricky... that mean you have to create an event in Softimage I guess...

the rest looks totally doable with PyQt

[Steven Caron]

ya, it might be slow.

i dont see an advantage to the bi-directionality feature, anyone care to give me a good example?

s

[Simon Anderson]

We had a by directional features on our last production, they wern't that hard to get working and seemed to be very stable. when you selected an object it would perform a callback to a Qt window and populate the window with all the assets information and a rendered image of the object, this helped in using super low res standins.

[Simon Anderson]

bi-directional*

[David Gallagher]

Hello!

Lots of helpful uses.
If you're learning what button is what control, selecting a control shows you where the button is.
If you select multiple buttons, you can see exactly what you have selected in a comprehensive way.
If you select all, or a set, you can see if something is missing in the picker, because buttons won't be highlighted.
Since the buttons highlight gray if the associated buttons are partly, but not all selected, if you are missing any buttons, it's really easy to tell.
In Maya, when you select multiple objects, you have no idea what you now have selected because it grabs the whole heirarchies. You're almost completely lost. The Picker actually helps you see what you have selected in Maya.
Some buttons select multiple objects -- wouldn't it be great to know exactly what it just selected?
With the Synoptic, you can select a button, but you may forget what button you hit. Having it stay linked to the selection is quite a bit more orienting.
If you drag a rectangle, you can see what buttons are being selected as you go.

Basically, once you use this workflow, it's really hard to go back!

Strangely, in Maya, the birectional highlighting is not slow.

I will probably make a quick demonstration so you can see the workflow and the benefits.
Thanks!
Dave G

[David Gallagher]

Sounds good! So, for anyone who would use a port to Softimage, would they have to install that plug-in as well?

[Raffaele Fragapane]

Bi-Directionality is actually quite important.
A lot of people want to do part of a selection in the viewport quickly, and then add a few missing, or easier to retrieve, bits clicking around in the character pane.

Doing it with events isn't a huge drag, it only kicks in at selection time in the viewport, and it's most likely done with a monitor job in Maya, which tends to have comparable lag, so if people find it ok in one they will most likely be fine with the other's.

[David Gallagher]

Ok, sounds great. I hadn't seen that Zvgui app!

To be clear, AnimSchool Picker is a Maya plug-in, not a standalone app. One helpful thing: when you use the Maya manipulator hotkeys when in the Picker window, Maya responds to them normally, which is very handy for workflow. (If it's a totally separate app like abxPicker which we had been using, it doesn't. So when you select something and want to switch to rotate mode, you have to click in the interface to be back in Maya.)

[Steven Caron]

*written with my thumbs

[Steven Caron]

this is a good example. combined with a few other good reasons i would probably implement an event, but if this were the only good reason i would still avoid doing it with an event. as i said in my email to david, if performance were to be an issue, i would highlight the controls in the gui once the cursor enters the application.

there are a few things in softimage that make me paranoid and selection events is one of them. i remember a plugin that was installed at blur a long time ago that did an on selection change script that was the culprit for some serious lag for the animators.

i also imagine one might want to keep open multiple character guis and i can see this getting out of hand. but its still worth some investigation.

s

[jo benayoun]

hey david,
you shouldn't need to update your widgets every time the user has changed its selection (completely behind steve on that one) but everytime focus has changed back to your widget.
overload QWidget::enterEvent or QWidget::focusInEvent and update your highlight buttons when the widget is under the cursor.
your developer could also have a look to the tool sdk, both are compatible and you could end up with something nice (custom manipulater + synoptic).
-- jo

2012/11/21 Steven Caron <car...@gmail.com>

[David Gallagher]

Thanks Jo! We will do that if the speed is a problem. Thanks!
Dave G